Indian doctors have removed a kidney weighing almost 7.4kg (16.3lbs) from a patient which is as much as two newborn babies. A kidney generally weighs between 120-150g and its assumed to be the largest kidney ever removed in India.

The patient was suffering from a condition called Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease that causes cysts to grow all over the organ.

A doctor assisting in the operation said large kidneys are common in patients with the disease. But Dr Sachin Kathuria, from Sir Ganga Ram hospital in Delhi, said that doctors usually would not remove the organ unless there were symptoms of infection and internal bleeding, as they are performing at least some filtering functions in the body. This patient had a bad infection which was not responding to antibiotics, and the kidneys massive size was causing breathing difficulties in the patient, hencethey had to remove it.

Dr Kathuria further said that doctors were expecting a large kidney while operating, but the size of this organ had astonished them. He told BBC that his other kidney is even bigger. He said that the heaviest kidney according to the Guinness World Records is 4.5kg, even though urology journals had records of kidneys that were even heavier than this one. One kidney from the US weighed 9kg while another from the Netherlands was 8.7kg.

Dr Kathuria also said that doctors had not decided yet to submit their findings to the Guinness commission as a world record, but were definitely "considering it".

According to the NHS website, polycystic kidney disease is a common hereditary condition, causing problems when patients are between 30 and 60 years old. It can cause kidney function to worsen until it finally ends in kidney failure.

Source: BBC News